The Journal said Sprint is considering spinning off its WiMax unit and merging it with Cleawire.

The two sides had originally planned to cover the country in WiMAX high speed Internet service, kind of like a huge Wi-Fi network but faster and completely mobile. Sprint-Nextel was to eventually cover 185 million people including 75 percent of the top 50 markets. Clearwire, the Kirkland, Wash. start-up created by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, would cover the last 115 million people.

But somehow, the two sides couldn’t agree on their original plan. They’ve always held open the idea that their joint network could come together again under new terms but it was unclear if that was ever going to happen. Now, it looks like we may yet see a big WiMax network, which would be great for mobile Internet use.

Mobile Internet use hasn’t really taken off, but the hope was that with true high speed wireless systems like WiMax, we could see a whole lot people accessing the Internet on mobile devices and also connecting a raft of devices remotely.

It’s good that Sprint and Clearwire seem to be pushing to make progress on WiMax. The winner of the 700 MHz wireless spectrum, likely Verizon Wireless, will probably be looking at developing some competing high speed network. If Sprint/Clearwire gets their act together we could see a pretty fast deployment of WiMax. Sprint is already moving forward on WiMax trials in Chicago and the Washington DC area.

The winner of the ongoing 700 MHz spectrum will still need to wait until next year before the spectrum is vacated and then they’ll have to test the system first. Sprint and Clearwire could press their advantage if they get the ball rolling now. We’ll just have to see.